Gangs kill and terrorize Victory City overwhelming law and order. Super villains run amok. Become a vigilante and strike back using violence to fight violence in the dark setting nicknamed Vigilante City.

Taken together, the Vigilante Core Rules and the Vigilante Villains Guide provide rules for character creation, game play, city building, and adventure writing. They create a gritty setting of failing economics, corruption, drugs, gangs, and mutated and supernatural beasts juxtaposed against super powers and super villains.

Highly customizable, Vigilante City (VC) allows players to run humans and mega-humans (with super powers). For grittier play, PCs can be restricted to human classes only. Options range from human classes like archer and hardboiled detective to mega-humans including mutants and supersoldiers. Character origins can be randomly generated and include a background and a small skill boost.

VC uses the d20 Survive This!! system with a mix of old school and modern rule design. Characters have classes, hit points, skills, and saving throws. Alignment consists of Chaos and Law. Advantage and disadvantage from D&D 5E is used. Optional Vigilante Points track a character’s reputation as it waxes and wanes. Because of its d20 roots, PCs do advance in the game. A dark avenger will get harder to take down, will hit harder, terrify even hardened criminals, and eventually become immune to fear. However, the class base means that the increase in power sticks close to what the vigilante could do at 1st level. Rules also cover sample vehicles and vehicle upgrades along with chases, races, and crashes.

The Villains Guide includes a sample city and gangs, rules for creating your own city, a detailed location with anthropomorphs (humanoid animals), and a rogue’s gallery of super villains. Goo Jira is a humanoid pool of sludge and pollution, the Iron Clan are ninjas, and Miss Menagerie controls animals and can turn into light. Sample NPCs and animals are also detailed and templates provided for creatures like werewolves and zombies. Rules for contacts for PCs can be used with the NPCs. A selection of pregenerated characters and an NPC superhero team round out the book.

Using some random rolls, GMs can create detailed neighborhoods for the PCs to defend from violent gangs and super villains. For example, a GM generates a city block consisting of the projects, an abandoned building, a nightclub, and a homeless shelter. The area has no wi-fi or cell phone service. There’s a lone prostitute and a known murderer on the street. Rumors persist that organ thieves are harvesting in the area. A biker gang into hell raising hangs out in on the block drinking and toking. The drug of choice is you bounce? and the PCs are there to capture a giant alligator in the sewers.

More random rolls can generate NPCs complete with motivations and abilities. For example a villain might be a short adult female who is a bored celebrity with too much wealth and fame. They are secretly backed by city hall and want to control several blocks including the PCs’ own neighborhood. She always wears sunglasses.

Like other Survive This!! games, this RPG contains everything to play and build a campaign A gaming group will be well equipped to fight crime in a decaying city. A variety of character options exist for players. GMs are provided a variety of foes to run, a city to set the game in, tools to generate city blocks and villains as well as gangs and drugs, and a variety of adventure ideas to build on. Coupled with Runehammer’s art and layout, which provide a constant visual theme, Vigilante City delivers a serious punch.

This article was contributed by Charles Dunwoody as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. Please note that Charles is a participant in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to DriveThruRPG. If you enjoy the daily news and articles from EN World, please consider contributing to our Patreon!

Great review, Charles. I'm waiting on my physical rewards on this one, and I've read the pdf material that I was sent already. The tables in this game are really fun, and I love a superhero RPG with random character generation, ala the old Villains and Vigilantes way of doing things.

My biggest concern was with the system itself. Not meaning to be overly critical here, but as I remember the system, in some instances it's a 'roll over' the target number system, and in others it's a 'roll under' the target number. I think that this would be really confusing, especially for someone as lunk-headed as myself. I can barely keep track of the 'just roll a 4 or better' in another popular system.

But the tables are fun, the setting and approach and is great, and Runehammer's art is generous and really fantastic. I hope Eric Bloat has a real hit with this one. He already has another KSer up, from what I understand.

The d20 in the modern age needs to fix or improve the value of CR or XPs to avoid the "Cobretti effect". In the movie "Cobra" Brigitte Nielsen couldn't face the night slasher only run away like in a survival horror game, but Sylvester Stallone with enough weapons could kill all the cult of the new dawn.

Great review, Charles. I'm waiting on my physical rewards on this one, and I've read the pdf material that I was sent already. The tables in this game are really fun, and I love a superhero RPG with random character generation, ala the old Villains and Vigilantes way of doing things.

My biggest concern was with the system itself. Not meaning to be overly critical here, but as I remember the system, in some instances it's a 'roll over' the target number system, and in others it's a 'roll under' the target number. I think that this would be really confusing, especially for someone as lunk-headed as myself. I can barely keep track of the 'just roll a 4 or better' in another popular system.

But the tables are fun, the setting and approach and is great, and Runehammer's art is generous and really fantastic. I hope Eric Bloat has a real hit with this one. He already has another KSer up, from what I understand.

Thanks!

Yeah, I could see how the two systems might be confusing. Saves roll low and skills/attack roll high.

The d20 in the modern age needs to fix or improve the value of CR or XPs to avoid the "Cobretti effect". In the movie "Cobra" Brigitte Nielsen couldn't face the night slasher only run away like in a survival horror game, but Sylvester Stallone with enough weapons could kill all the cult of the new dawn.

I have an interview with Eric that will be posted soon. One of his design goals was to have heroes start out as nearly normal people and grow into being heroes over the levels. Not have too much in the way of power jumps and keep things street level. Having only 10 levels will help iron out some of the huge power differences I expect, but only playing through a whole campaign will determine if that is true or not.

Reviews

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Gangs kill and terrorize Victory City overwhelming law and order. Super villains run amok. Become a vigilante and strike back using violence to fight violence in the dark setting nicknamed Vigilante City.